<Begin Segment 16>

RP: What kinds of sports did you participate in?

HN: Basketball, football, and baseball. All three.

RP: Uh-huh. Were your... were you on organized teams at all or were these just games that you...

HN: Everybody has organized teams. You play against other teams, yeah. Organized games or... basketball you play two on two or three on three and things like that, but in baseball usually you have to have a nine man team and, and I belonged to a couple of teams when I got older. One of 'em was the Red Sox. And I think that there's a picture in Toyo Miyatake's exhibit as the Red Sox and I'm sittin' right on the end of it.

RP: What was your position?

HN: Shortstop.

RP: And this was baseball, not softball?

HN: Baseball

RP: Okay. Where do you guys remember playing baseball? In the firebreaks or...

HN: Yeah, in the firebreaks. They had a big baseball field. The biggest one was right down between nine and twelve. Oh, I forget. There's a big baseball field down there.

RP: Oh...

HN: Right behind the school.

RP: Right. There was a large field between Block 19 and 25.

HN: Yeah.

RP: Yeah. Where, where the semi-pro teams, the San Fernando Aces and the...

HN: Oh, yeah. That's where we used to play.

RP: You played down there?

HN: Yeah. But we, I played down there on that field. But, I wasn't old enough to be with the Aces, San Fernando Aces, but I knew all the guys on the team. I think I was a bat boy for them. The Yoshiwara brothers, Ben and...

RP: Pete Matsui?

HN: Pete Matsui, right. And the Okamura boys. And Pete Okamura and George and Massi and Jim Kishi.

RP: Were the Tomura brothers?

HN: Yeah.

RP: Remember them?

HN: San Fernando Aces.

RP: Yeah. Barry Tomura.

HN: Yeah.

RP: Yeah. So they were sort of, I wouldn't call 'em heroes, but role models for you?

HN: Well, the north Hollywood group was. 'Cause most of 'em, north Hollywood group, lived in Block 12. Which is, which is diagonally across from five, you know. It's five, six, then would be eleven, twelve.

RP: Uh-huh.

HN: So I used to go up to twelve and play on their team, the north Hollywood group. But I was from north Hollywood, the two years prior. So I was kinda like their bat boy, too, for the north Hollywood Japanese American team that they had back in the valley.

RP: Oh, they did have a, North Hollywood had a team? So San Fernando, north Hollywood...

HN: San Fernando, north Hollywood, we used to play each other.

RP: Oh, a rivalry.

HN: Yeah.

RP: Where would they play in the valley? Do you remember the field?

HN: Probably some high school. I don't remember. But the... god, I can't remember that far back.

RP: Was your dad into baseball, too? I mean...

HN: What's that?

RP: Was your dad into watching baseball or...

HN: My dad, he worked all his life. He never went, had time for sports, but... and then my brothers, he didn't want to play sports. He'd fly model airplanes more. [Laughs]

RP: Good choice.

HN: Yeah.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.